How did Leopold stabilize the defense? Lindy didn't say that he was waiting for the team as a whole to get better before dealing with under-performing vets, he said that Leopold, even as one of the team's worst two defenders was a stabilizing presence. Leo has been better recently than he was when Lindy made the comments I referred to. So why now? Either Lindy believed in what he said at the time and was totally ****ing wrong, or isn't addressing the media and thus the fans with a shred of honesty about what is going on in his locker room and with this team.
I don't hate Ruff and I always -- at least consciously -- put aside my personal feelings. How much ice time the 4th line gets doesn't matter, if anything that goes to the point. There's nothing wrong with Grigorenko playing 6 minutes with scrubs and being there as an option for the 2nd PP unit or to move up to the 3rd line if things aren't going well in the game. A part of why the 4th line doesn't get much time is because it has Scott on it in the first place.
No, but I've argued with you about Lindy and his semantics enough times that I thought you took Ruff's comments to mean "I'm waiting for other players to turn it around before I bench a vet" instead of "simply by being in the lineup, Leo is making things better."
Couple of things
1. Grigs isn't NHL ready so be definition he is not a better 2nd liner than Kaleta. Who I agree is not a 2nd liner.
2. Stafford has 1 goal on 47 shots (2.7 shooting %). So lets not pretend Ennis was playing with a sniper this year on his RW.
3. You agree Grigs shouldn't be here but insist he plays on the 2nd line?
Btw Kaleta with Ennis is obviously a short term thing and Stafford will be back there soon enough. Probably late in tonight's game.
Regier probably thought that Ruff would constantly play him for the whole season, but Ruff is clearly not doing this. I doubt they'd be ok with keeping Grigs up had they known that Ruff wasn't going to use him the whole season
